Political Correctness; also, Egmont's Mickey

David A Gerstein David.A.Gerstein at williams.edu
Tue Sep 28 01:41:41 CET 1993


	Dear Harry (and everyone),

	Yeah... Carl should be *Buettner*, with the "u" before the
"e".  Thanks, Harry.  (I don't think I've ever spelled that fellow's
name consistently.)

	Buetnner's art is really unique in the mid-1940s, with a
softness to it that refrains from cuteness (as Jack Bradbury would
later get just *mired* in).  By the way, the stories in the first
Br'er Rabbit comic are his, not Murry's.  (The way the boldface
italics are lettered in the word balloons is enough of a giveaway...
compare those stories to BROS 208's Murry items and you'll see the
difference.)

	When it comes to political correctness... Disney management
told Bob Foster that he couldn't reprint old Br'er Rabbit stories
without rewriting the dialect to remove the Southern accents...
offensive to Southerners, apparently (not to blacks in particular as
far as I know, but I'm not sure).  In WDC&S 576, he snuck two
consecutive Sunday-strip stories in completely unchanged.  The
readers loved them, so maybe Gladstone will get a better deal.

	Fabio:  I'm not sure what you meant about Darkest Africa.  It
was censored in the CBL (more so than any other story... it being the
*only* one from which a whole panel was actually cut), censored the
same way when it appeared last year in DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES, and if
that's what was printed in Italy, that was censored the same way.

	Donald as a vegetarian?  Hmmmm... he often eats roast chicken,
and one of his best friends (Gyro) is that very bird.  At least one
story has also shown him eating roast goose, and that defines both Gus
and Gladstone.  Vicar's story in US 265 showed Scrooge having a "ham
steak" for lunch, and merely five issues later we saw him opposing the
classic *pig* villain, Argus McSwine.
	Perhaps the ultimate helping of confusion is Barks' classic
"Think Box" story in WDC&S 141.  I'm in fact finishing off a sequel to
that for Egmont right now!
	And Mickey is willing to eat roast duck... for example, see
"The Bat Bandit of Inferno Gulch," in which Mickey returns home to be
given a celebratory *duck* dinner.  And if you think things changed
after Donald appeared in the MM strip, nope... in "Unhappy Campers"
(1939) Mickey catches ducks for dinner, too.
	So maybe the ducks have been made vegetarians to avoid rather
squeamish undertones, but maybe not.
	An interesting story to that respect is "My Friends the
Trees," a Vicar story that Egmont published circa early 1992.  Donald
cheats on Daisy, joining an ecological movement and falling in love
with a politically correct duck.  He invites her to dinner -- making a
vegetarian dinner to butter her up, he notes -- but forgets he also
invited Daisy to dinner, and *both* romances fizzle.  I won't be
translating that one... it just isn't *good* enough, aside from the
one scene of Donald fixing dinner.

	As for other info... I'm actually getting into some Mickey
stories for Egmont now, and we'll see what the reaction is when
they're published.  I'm using some characters who've been underused in
recent years.  My first one pairs Mickey with Horace, and the second
pits Mickey and Minnie against Sylvester Shyster.  They've already
brought back Eli Squinch and will be using him regularly from now on.
Mickey is getting a facelift in Denmark.  He's also going to be
returning to wearing his old short pants in the stories being done
there (although it's being done in stages, as the Disney foreign
office much prefers Murry's Mouse).

	I've had a nutty idea to adapt a story I once did with my own
characters for Mickey... as a Mouse story, it would involve Mickey
traveling to Europe with Goofy and *Butch*, his early pal from "Circus
Roustabout" and a few others from that time.

	I have also gained permission to use Mickey's rival Mortimer
and/or Minnie's lazy cousin Ruffhouse Rat as Gladstone-like foils for
Mickey.  What do you think?  No such stories are as yet in the works.
(Although an idea has *just now* sprung into my head....!)

	Your friend,


	David Gerstein



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